Pondering

Overcome fear and keep going

Mark Williams shares the amazing story of his grandfather.  What an encouragement to all of us to persevere in the midst of life’s trials.

The ship carrying his grandfather to the new world, the S.S. Norge, sank crossing the Atlantic in 1904. Eskild Alfred Eskildsen helped women and children get into the lifeboats. When the boats were full, he helped get life jackets on the remaining women and children.

When the ship was about to go under, he got a life jacket and swam out to the furthest boats. Why?

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Jim Ulvog

The world is complicated – the ‘you-can’t-even-just-hand-out-a-wad-of-cash’ chapter

I don’t understand why, but there has been a lot of tweeting in the twitter world about the wonders of addressing poverty by just giving everyone a handful of cash. That would make a number of aid issues a lot easier to deal with.

However…..

The world is complicated. Everything has unexpected side issues.

An experienced worker in the aid field who maintain anonymity by self-identifying as “J” writes at AidSpeak.

He explains why even giving cash away is difficult in his post, Cash.

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Jim Ulvog

Unintended consequences – “Your help is hurting,” government to government version

Previous post described how development aid can sometimes cause hurt.

Part 2 of that discussion describes how government-to-government aid can sometimes make things worse and prevent development.

Jerry Bowyer interviews Peter Greer in Your Help Is Hurting, Part II: The Unintended Consequences Of Giving Dictators Foreign Aid.

Mr. Greer uses the example of the president of Zimbabwe distributing food received as a part of international aid only in the areas that vote for him.

Want to eat? Vote for him. Want to oust the dictator? Your family and community starve.

Not quite what was intended when governments approved the grant.

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Jim Ulvog

Unintended consequences – generous gift to local church undermines their giving

Mark Williams tells of a giving a generous offering when he was blessed to be the guest preacher at a church in India – Do You Destroy Through Dependency?

What he did not expect was his graciousness hurting the congregation.

How did that happen?

He gave two $20 bills.

Seems like a reasonable amount, doesn’t it? Yet he explains: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Unintended consequences – “Your help is hurting”

How would you like this to be your legacy on the missions committee?

After the genocide in Rwanda, your church decides to help the village by providing eggs to everyone. Great idea, right?

Absolutely.

You help for a while and then you sense God is leading you to help in another area now that things are settling down in Rwanda.

Cool, right?

Sure.

Unfortunately, what you didn’t realize is there was an entrepreneur who had bought some hens and sold eggs in the community. He was growing his business and providing food to more and more people.

No business can compete with free, so when you started helping with your ministry of giving away eggs, his business went under. He moved on to another business so he could feed his family.

When you pulled out of the town, there were no eggs. That protein was unavailable.

Not so great.

Not so cool.

You drove out of business the guy who was previously meeting local needs and then you disrupted the food supply.

You left the community in more distress than when you first arrived.

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Jim Ulvog

12 situations when it might matter to you that the Feds are tracking everything you text or email and making note of everywhere you go.

Recent news reports indicate federal intelligence agencies are gathering up a lot more information than we knew. That data is available to undisclosed lists of unknown people and will be retained for a very long time.

So what?

Here’s just a few circumstances in which you might not want access to your data by a long list of unidentified persons from various federal, state, or local agencies who were granted access to various unidentified parts of the various databases: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

What do you do if your cloud-based mission critical application is down for an indefinite time? Illustration from a reader for RSS feeds.

Update: The Old Reader back up at end of work day Thursday – that makes 1 1/2 days of the weekend and 4 workdays it was down.

Your tech provider may go off-line for an indefinite time. Another reason not to let your technology hold you captive.

The Old Reader went down around lunchtime on Saturday, 7-20, and isn’t back up just before lunch on Wednesday, 7-24. That’s four days – most of the weekend and one-half of a work-week. No public estimate when it will return.

Don’t be held captive by your technology.

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Jim Ulvog

All the fraudulent accounting at Enron was fully reviewed & approved and seemed perfectly fine until the indictments were issued.

I have a post at my other blog, Attestation Update, describing a speech by the former CFO of Enron that says all of the bad transactions that sent him to jail were approved by the attorneys, approved by the auditors, and approved by the board.

Yet Enron is the poster child for corporate fraud.  A bunch of people went to jail for transactions that were fully reviewed and approved.

My post is All the Enron accounting was approved by the attorneys and the auditors and the board. Everything was perfectly legit. Until indictments were issued.

Here is the question that should unsettle all of us:

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Jim Ulvog

Part 2 of “America’s Worst Charities” focuses on regulation

“Lack of regulation and meager penalties allow worst charities to thrive” is the second part of an ongoing series from the Tampa Bay Times and Center for Investigative Reporting. Part 3 expected in a week.

If I were to summarize a several thousand word article, the main point would likely be the patchwork of federal and state regulatory structure has a difficult time chasing bad players out of the telemarketing business.

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Jim Ulvog

Why isn’t everyone blogging?

(Cross-post from my other blog, Attestation Update.)

That’s the question raised by Seth Godin in his 5000th post.

All knowledge workers have something worth sharing.

Mr. Godin’s biggest surprise after 11 years of blogging?

That more people aren’t doing this. Not just every college professor (particularly those in the humanities and business), but everyone hoping to shape opinions or spread ideas. Entrepreneurs. Senior VPs. People who work in non-profits. Frustrated poets and unknown musicians… Don’t do it because it’s your job, do it because you can.

Audit CPAs – (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Outcome measures – On the other hand…

Moving to outcome measures won’t make things perfect in terms of evaluating charities.

There are some downsides to consider, as mentioned by Nonprofit Quarterly – Want Charities to be Evaluated Based on Impact? Be Careful What You Wish For.

The article raises three concerns, all of which we need to think about very carefully. I will mention the three issues and comment on each.

First, (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Thank you

It is the VETERAN, not the preacher,

who has given us freedom of religion.

It is the VETERAN, not the reporter,

who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the VETERAN, not the poet,

who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the VETERAN, not the campus organizer,

who has given us freedom to assemble.

It is the VETERAN, not the lawyer,

who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the VETERAN, not the politician,

Who has given us the right to vote.

Source unknown

Jim Ulvog

Another unsettling thing I’ve learned while blogging – the definition of poverty p0rn

If you want to stretch your brain farther than you thought possible, start blogging.

You can stop laughing now. As a cautious, restrained, introverted CPA, it is usually a half-inch journey to travel the entire distance of my comfort zone.

Starting my own business stretched that zone. Blogging shredded it.

One of the opened frontiers for me was looking at fundraising and international aid in a completely new way. A while back I saw some materials from one of the international aid NGOs. With my new vision I could see the manipulative story and oddities in the video. Evoking pity was the goal throughout.

Having already been stretched, I was able to see things differently. Like noticing every helping face in a brochure was white. Like realizing every needy face was brown or black. Further reflection revealed the only happy black face was next to a newly painted hut (which was probably provided by an aid organization and the cause of the smile).

I now know the name for that:

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Jim Ulvog

Impact of the technology revolution has barely begun

(Cross-post from my other blog, Outrun Change.)

That we haven’t seen the full impact of IT is a comment I heard the first time a few years ago. That sort of made sense but didn’t really register. This blog is focused on sorting out that change. The idea that the technology revolution has barely begun finally clicked for me with a column by Matthew Yglesias – Why I’m Optimistic About Growth and Innovation.

A few industries have seen huge impact from technology. Think of book publishing, journalism, and music. Those industries have been turned upside down. I read a lot and listen to a bit of music so am quite attuned to those areas. The way everyone consumes news has been transformed. I regularly read dozens of blogs a day. They just appear on my computer screen with a mouse click or two. I’ve always been a news junkie, and my consumption has soared in the last few years.

However, as big as those industries are, they are a small part of the total economy.

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Jim Ulvog

What is your price?

(Cross-post from my other blog, Attestation Update.)

We know the price Mr. Scott London, former partner of KPMG,  is accused of setting for his integrity, honor, and reputation. The entrance price tag was several thousand dollars and added up to under $100,000.

Cumulative amount is allegedly $50,000 cash plus a watch with claimed value of $12,000 plus some concert tickets for his family, with asserted total around $70,000 or $90,000.

That total allegation isn’t the real measure of his price. The starting point was a few thousand dollars in the first deal. If the story outlined in the criminal indictment is correct, that is the point his integrity was sold.

An old joke about your price

There is an old joke with many variations that goes something like this:

Man to woman in a social setting: “would you sleep with me for a million dollars?”

She indicated she would be willing to do so.

Him: “How about for $20?”

With great indignation, she said “Of course not! What kind of woman do you think I am?”

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Jim Ulvog